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Sunday, July 29, 2012

The societal marketing concept calls
upon marketers to build social and ethical considerations into their marketing
practices. They must balance and juggle the often conflicting criteria of
company profits, consumer want satisfaction, and public interest.

Increasingly more organizations are
holding themselves to a higher ethical standard considering the overall
interests of society in the operations of their day-to-day business, but many
of them don’t know how to actually make changes that would improve both
business performance and societal impact.

Beyond the
transaction/marketing driven model of brand building, enlightened brand owners
are building the value of their brands around aligning social good with
business good. These organizations realize the foundation of their competitive
advantage will be based on a higher purpose --- social good.In the marketing driven model of brand building, the focus is on awareness
and communicating better features of the product. Consumers and customers
simply exchanged money for a product. When the performance of the product
matched up to customer expectations the brand promise was delivered. End of
story.That’s not good enough for
consumers/customers today.

Apple’s problem
of complicity in the harmful working conditions in the Chinese supplier
factories is a recent example of the deeper scrutiny placed on brand owners.
Apple’s circumstances makes the point clear --- consumers not only consider the
products you make, or the services you provide, they’re also looking carefully
at your entire value chain–where your stuff is made, what it’s made from, how
it impacts the environment, the community, who your suppliers are, how
well employees are treated. Consumers are scrutinizing the value of brands
based on the social good they do in the world.Brand owners must ask themselves “how can we align our business good with
social good”? The answer to that question needs to come from the very top
of the organization, not from marketing or PR departments.Nielsen’s Global Corporate Citizenship Survey found that 46 percent of
global consumers are willing to pay extra for products and services from
companies that have implemented programs to give back to society.Younger consumers tend to be more socially conscious, the research shows.
Just over half of those consumers between 15 and 39 years old said they were
willing to pay extra for such items, compared with 37 percent of those over 40.Shoppers outside of the U.S. are leading the social responsibility push. The
study revealed a larger percentage of consumers in Asia Pacific, the Middle
East, Africa and Latin America are willing to pay extra for products and
services from socially responsible companies than their North American and
European peers.Environmental sustainability, improvements to science, technology, engineering
and math education and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger topped the
list of causes important to socially conscious consumers.

Breaking down the barriers within organizations

The problems start when the CEO hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid and considerations
for shareholders and senior management dominate over customers and employees.
Far too many companies have set up CSR initiatives simply to provide some
window dressing or PR to their corporate story.The problem gets more complicated because there is much research showing
that consumers favor brands that show social responsibility. So the temptation
to greenwash is real and brands do the logical thing and try to ride the
bandwagon.

Traditionally, the siloed nature
of organizations would have one group of people thinking and acting on
corporate philanthropy and community, while other groups are developing and
marketing products with the greatest margins possible. These functions rarely
if ever are coordinated by a vision to maximize social and business good.
Business good and social good being “functions” rather a unifying principal of
existence.Enlightened brand owners are breaking down the functional barriers in their
organization and converging these interests into a common social purpose driven
brand value.Patagonia Outdoor clothing is extraordinary in this regard. The higher
purpose of Patagonia is not to make and market more technically driven outer
wear, rather Patagonia’s leadership has aligned their core values and mission
around stewardship and sustainability of the planet as a whole. They are a
leading voice and advocate for the greater good. This is not a brand strategy,
or clever marketing– it’s who they are as an enterprise. It’s the reason their
employees come to work every day. It’s also the reason the brand has
unquestioned relevant differentiation in their customers minds and competitive
advantage at a premium price point in the marketplace. Patagonia is a brand
that represents social good and business good as two sides of the same coin.

The deeper principal that brands like Patagonia are based on is simple ---
social good is highly valued (relevant) to its customers and drives business
performance (competitive advantage). Patagonia then walks the talk every day.
For Patagonia, there’s no difference between advocating for greater sustainable
and stewardship of the planet and making money.Cooperate and collaborate with competitorsCompanies now face multiple challenges including a struggling economy, an
eroding middle class, persistent poverty, and growing environmental damage. As
such, companies need to work together to solve problems that are larger than
their own self-interest. Such efforts are also a powerful demonstration to
their customer community of the brand’s commitment to the well being of others
as well as themselves. When companies collaborate they are smarter, faster, and
more effective at finding the solutions and often reap unforeseen benefits for
their individual brands.

Corporate
social responsibility (policy, program or process) is strategic when it yields
substantial business-related benefits to the firm, in particular by supporting
core business activities and thus contributing to the firm’s effectiveness in
accomplishing its mission,” according to Lee Burke and Jeanne Logsdon in How Corporate Social Responsibility Pays Off.

It does
so by emphasizing the new idea that the purpose of corporate social
responsibility within firms is for value creation. “The question that is
addressed here is: under what conditions does a firm jointly serve its own
strategic business interests and the societal interests of its stakeholders,”
Burke and Logsdon wrote. In their study, value creation is most prevalent when
the following factors are considered:

Centrality — closeness of
fit to the firm’s mission and objectives;

Specificity — ability to
capture private benefits by firm;

Pro-activity — degree to
which the program is planned in anticipation of emerging social trends and
in the absence of crises;

Voluntarism — the scope for
discretionary decision-making and the lack of externally imposed
compliance requirements;

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About Me

I’m a modern man for the millennium. Digital. Bilingual. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern construction.
I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading.
With the right marketing we can save the world...one brand at a time!!